Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Corruption is ‘Not a Russian Word,’ Orekh Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, January 27 – Russians may
look like Europeans or even Americans, but they are quite different inside, and
nothing has highlighted that difference more clearly than the way Europeans and
Americans reacted to reports about Vladimir Putin’s corruptly gained wealth and
the way Russians did, according to Anton Orekh.

In a commentary in “Yezhednevny
zhurnal” yesterday, the Moscow commentator says that what the BBC documented
and American officials confirmed “from an American-European point of view”
certainly looks like corruption. But from a Russian one, this situation looks
quite different (ej.ru/?a=note&id=29245).

For Russians, what was shown is “not
corruption” but rather a manifestation of friendship and a kindly responsiveness
to the needs of those around him.“Corruption
is some kind of imported word,” Orekh says; and that may be why Russians can’t
really fight against it because they do not understand this phenomenon the way
the West does.

“In the West,” Orekh continues, “money
gives power, but among [Russians] it is just the reverse: power gives money and
also takes money away as well.”

Putin doesn’t need billions in cash
or stocks, “if he owns the entire country!” the commentator continues. “The
extent of his wealth is in fact equal to the size of the budget of the country,
or even more to the size of all its national wealth. At any moment,he can get
absolutely everything he needs and practically in any quantity.”

No one knows exactly how many
residences Putin has, but Orekh says that he knows one thing for sure: he didn’t
pay anything for any of them.They were
all a gift from those around him. And Putin doesn’t need property abroad
because he can travel there in luxury provided by the Russian state.

“The last time Putin really
purchased something on his own was in the last century,” certainly well before
he became president, the commentator continues. His friends need money to buy
things but he makes sure of their loyalty by providing them with state
resources to do so, via one or another channel.

Moreover, Orekh says, Putin doesn’t
need foreign accounts.He might if he
planned to retire but he has no such plans. “The meaning of his rule is that it
is conceived as being for life. And even if there will be somewhere in his old
age assigned yet another Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev], Vladimir Vladimirovich
will be in it our Russian Deng Xiaoping.”

“Therefore,” the commentator
concludes, Putin “will never need anything … He will live – indeed he already
does so – under communism for a single individual, having organized for his friends
developed socialism with elements of feudalism.”